In TV show, white woman "becomes" black woman to live out her fantasy: to have sex with a black man - Brazilian styled blackface

Actress Aline Moraes: made up as black woman (left) and as herself

With the recent controversy surrounding tennis player Caroline Wozniacki stuffing her top and skirt to impersonate tennis champion Serena Williams
(coincidentally in Brazil), I thought I would revisit another recent
incident involving a white woman imitating a black woman. On the
November 29th episode of Brazil's Globo TV program Como aproveitar o fim do mundo (How to take advantage of the end of the world),
actress Aline Moraes's character Kátia artificially darkens her skin
and dons an afro wig to "become" a black woman. Why? In Globo's own take
on the end of the world craze, Kátia wants do everything she hadn't
managed to do in her life up to that point including fixing the errors.
So what does this have to do with looking like a black woman? Check out
how the blog called Belezas Negras explained it in a post called "Black Face e o fim do mundo na TV Globo (Blackface and the end of the world on Globo TV)":

"Globo TV tries to spread the in-vogue belief in the end of the world
on the cabalistic day of 12/21/2012, a touch of anticipated spectacle
on the couch.

"In its parody of the end of the world on TV, the series Como
aproveitar o fim do mundo (How to take advantage of the end of the
world) presents an episode in which a white actress, Aline Moraes, is
made up as a black woman in order to accomplish one of her “last
desires”: to a black man. I used the word “” because I find it
more consistent with the final moment in time, straight up with no
sweetener or false morality! After all, she only has a short time to
accomplish the act.

"In the minds of the authors, by the fictional scene they created,
this is one of those things that they believe some white women want at
the last minute. The critical conclusion that they ultimately reached is
consistent with the policy and standard imagery that Globo TV and its
clan of writers commonly produce and exhibit through racist stereotypes offered to the public as entertainment."

And this is how the news was reported on Globo's website

Actress Alinne Moraes appears as a black woman with an afro on Globo TV series

Do you recognize the girl in the photo above? It is Aline Moraes characterized for the TV program Como aproveitar o fim do mundo (How to take advantage of the end of the world).
In the episode, Kátia, her character in the Alexandre Machado and
Fernanda Young–written series, remembers that one of the main items on
her list of last wishes is to sleep with a black man and an oriental
man. To do this, she needs to adapt herself to the taste of the
candidate who she will try to take to bed.

To take on this appearance, Aline spent 40 minutes being made up and
coiffed before going on stage. The make-up team of the series used
long-lasting makeup as the base for her to have dark skin along with a
wig.

“The idea was to give her with an air of the mid-70s”, explains
Simone Batata about the characterization on the show. “Only that the
strands of the wig were straight and we needed to give it curls. Then we
had to unravel it strand by strand to create this ‘afro’ effect. It
came out exactly like we wanted.”

Here's a short clip of the scene from the show<tried embedding, but wasn't able to get the link. All the videos are on the actual blog post, however>

So what do think of this? Do you see it as racist? Disrespectful? Just
plain silly? My thing is this, I never like to see anything
remotely reminiscent of old blackface caricatures that served as a means
of dehumanizing black people in the 19th and 20th centuries. This
imitation of a black woman doesn't come across as dehumanizing or
hideous as the old black and white images from the early 20th century,
or the more outrageous blackface performances during Brazilian Carnaval and a current controversial TV show,
but my question is this: why imitate a black woman in an attempt to
have sex with a black man? Interracial relations, love and sex is
nothing new, and as we have shown in previous posts, there are plenty of
black men in Brazil who would accept a white woman
just as she is! Thus, for me, this is just plain silly. The other
problem is, as we have discussed in a few previous posts, it again plays
on the fetish of interracial sex as well as stereotypical images of black male sexuality.

On the other hand, this subtle display of blackface doesn't let
Brazilian TV networks off the hook. In the past 40 years or so,
Brazilian television has shown that it has no problem painting white
faces black for the sake of humor. And many of the other blackface
performances are just as ghoulish as those from the old Al Jolson era.
Below are just a few videos of blackface performances on Brazilian
television over the years.

A
Cabana do Pai Tomás: white actor Sérgio
Cardoso in blackface and without

In 1969, the Globo TV network aired the novela A
Cabana do Pai Tomás, a Brazilian take on the Harriet Beecher Stowe novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin. On the program, white actor Sérgio
Cardoso's face and body was painted black, he wore a wig and corks in
his nose to emulate a black man. The program provoked protests from
artists and intellectuals and gave the impression that there were no
black actors available or talented enough to play the part. Below are
only a few more of many videos of Brazilian styled blackface.

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